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'The Drawing Season' at the Kohler Arts Center

In ancient cave paintings charcoal was pushed and dragged in poetic line drawings describing animals and scenes. Thousands of years later artists like Cy Twombly scraped away at our devotion to images made from lines and let us see them pared down and pure. The line became art unto itself, not needing to describe a form or an object. It could remain simple and unadorned.

The John Michael Kohler Arts Center is currently hosting “The Drawing Season,” a series of six exhibits devoted to the practice of drawing. They anchor this journey with “The Line Unleashed.” Appropriately, it acknowledges and investigates the nature of this most primal mark in relation to drawing and contemporary art.

“The Drawing Season,” a series of related exhibits, extends the Kohler’s earlier investigation into contemporary drawing practices from 2000, “Blurry Lines.” Artists in both exhibits are using drawing as a primary form of expression, as opposed to a preparatory practice for other projects.

The Kohler’s main exhibition space is opened up with massive artworks arcing up to the ceiling, rising and falling like breath, and otherwise affirming Paul Klee’s concept of drawing as “taking a line for a walk.” The exhibit, humble in material, is grandiose in scope, describing how diverse the definition of line can be.

Artist Dave Eppley uses vinyl tape to create his colorful interpretation of the line called “Loom.” A rectangular panel of colored lines on the wall quickly moves out of its traditional format and begins to bend and weave, careering around the floors, walls and electrical outlets. Lines tear joyfully down the hallway and into the water fountain in the lobby. They appear as neon lights or lightning bolts on trajectories of their own design. They are whimsical and beg the viewer to follow them around the museum.

In the far corner of the gallery, a colossus of red and white stripes hangs from floor to ceiling. Its scale and visual presence is weighty. On closer inspection, Rita Macdonald has painted the wall of the gallery to mimic the swish and sway of a giant bolt of fabric hanging down and puddling in wrinkles and folds on the floor. The stripes and references to cloth are meant to serve as both a connection to the material world but also comment on formal austerity as well. The artwork achieves both ends with brio.

The line is given its lead enough in this exhibit to become animated. Anna Hepler created a grid of tape that connects plastic bags into an intuitively geometric form that inflates into a huge dirigible flower, which when at full bloom slowly exhales until the black lines circumnavigating it wilt into a messy tangle.

“The Drawing Season” is an anchor for other equally astonishing exhibits within the series. Curator Amy Chaloupka has matched two artists who reflect on dystopian scenarios in the exhibit “A Chill in the Air.” Large-scale graphite drawings display different views of existential reckonings by artists Robyn O’Neil and Chris Hipkiss. In her drawing "Everything that stands will be at odds with his neighbor, and everything that falls will perish without grace," O’Neil shows us hushed, snowy landscapes with pine groves dotted throughout. In this eerily quiet scene we see legions of track-suited male archetypes move about, some walking, others committing acts of violence and cowardice. We see them from above, an allegorical vision of ourselves. The drawings are lovely, melancholy and prescient.

Hipkiss’ work uses the same material and scale in his artwork, but here we see drawings of satanic mills, devilishly inventive factories gouting black smoke and cityscapes populated with hundreds of hermaphroditic minions marching in formation or performing other acts usually kept private. We are beguiled by the immensity and detail of the drawings but repulsed as we lean in for a closer look. They are dark visions of the future or perhaps a dismal but intoxicating present.

Other exhibits in the museum included internationally exhibited artist Laylah Ali. In her “Note Drawings” we get an intimate look at how she develops the psychology and symbolic language that she uses in her spare reflections on figuration. Timothy Wehrle’s untrained hand expresses anxiety, the isolation and loss of “home” in contemporary culture. I am reminded of Tom Waits’ gruff lamentation as he sings “Come on up to the House.”

The Kohler has once again created world class exhibits curated with precision and sensitivity. “The Drawing Season” remains on view through Sept. 2.

Rafael Francisco Salas is a painter, the chair of the art department at Ripon College and a regular Art City contributor.

Images from top: Installation view of "The Drawing Season;" "Robyn O'Neil's "Everything that stands will be at odds with his neighbor, and everything that falls will perish without grace," graphite on paper. Courtesy of Blanton Museum of Art, the University of Texas at Austin and the collection of Jeanne and Michael Klein.

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